I'm a journalist covering everything from media issues to the world of that very particular group of people who are just as rich as they are media shy. I also write about my native country of Brazil and its growing importance as a global player, from a Brazilian-who-spends-a-lot-of-time-abroad point of view. My articles have been cited by numerous publications and media outlets such as The Financial Times, USA Today, The Telegraph, CNN, MSNBC and others.Thanks to my work, I split my time between Europe, the United States and Brazil. Feel free to follow me on Twitter: @AndersonThinks. You can email me at: aantunes[at]forbes[dot]com

In a video produced by the magazine and posted on Youtube, which went viral (4.9 million views and counting), Almeida, who has been dubbed by the Brazilian press as the “king of the ‘camarote’,” a Portuguese word for private nightclub box, gives a few tips on how to achieve social success during a night out. “Always be dressed up with the best brands… Burberry, Armani, Prada, Gucci…” And he goes on, “You must own a supercar,” he says, while seen in the video arriving in Sao Paulo’s exclusive Pink Elephant club in his $500,000 Ferrari.

“I usually spend something between $80,000 and $130,000 per month on partying,” Almeida told VEJA SP. Needless to say he was promptly bombarded with criticism for “showing off” in a country whose social landscape remains one of the most unequal in the world. But there’s more to it than that.

Almeida’s over-the-top lifestyle in a way represents what’s happening in Brazil right now. The massive increase in credit in the South American country over the past 10 years has already left some economists worrying about a possible credit crunch. “The point is that its [credit] increased very rapidly and experience shows that countries where credit increases rapidly, experience crisis at some point or other,” Neil Shearing, chief emerging markets economist at macro-economic research firm Capital Economics, told CNBC in May.

Even in the late 1990s, Brazil was just like any other emerging economy, characterized by extremes of wealth and abject poverty with no social class as a bridge between them. A decade and more down the line, the effervescence in the middle cannot be missed. Yes, the great Brazilian middle class — defined as those who earn between $690 and $2,970 a month — has arrived and is here to stay. And if Brazil has made a name in the global stage, it had better thank these latecomers, empowered with good purchasing power and access to credit.

But Brazil’s history of hyperinflation also encouraged consumers to spend rather than save. The rise in the number of employed people over the years created a new class of borrowers who had the ability to repay. Small wonder that total credit in the domestic economy, which includes credit to both individuals and industry, registered a phenomenal increase from 35.2% to 46.4% of GDP between 2007 and March 2011.

The International Monetary Fund noted the growth of private credit in the country, saying consumer durable loans have recorded a 100% increase since 2007. A Financial Times report said credit growth in Brazil grew at the fastest monthly rate in September 2011, a pointer to the resilience of domestic demand in this Latin American economy even as European and U.S. economies remained in flux.

But are they really tempting a bust?

Many specialists would agree that Brazil’s economy is experiencing a consumer-borrowing model of growth. The surge in domestic consumption that has centered on consumer durables, not least automobiles, has been huge during the last decade. A study by McKinsey & Company in 2012 showed that 40% of consumers said they shop more in stores that extend credit, six times more than the U.S. Data from the Central Bank of Brazil in 2009 indicated that use of retail cards increased over 100% from 2004 to 2008.

Robert Shiller, who famously predicted the collapse of the U.S. housing market, has warned that such phenomena is causing a bubble to emerge in Brazil. “It’s not possible to know for sure, but I suspect there may be a housing bubble in the biggest cities in Brazil. The fact that prices have doubled over the last five years doesn’t sound good. If prices fall, this could cause problems, Shiller told BBC Brasil recently.

But some people remain very confident that Brazil is still the place to be, especially those in the luxury industry that have people such as Almeida as their biggest clients in emerging countries. The world’s biggest makers of luxury cars such as Mercedes-Benz to Audi which are betting that Brazil’s luxury vehicles market may triple by 2017.

If Almeida is profiting on Brazil’s middle-class carelessness, that means that an eventual financial crisis could come in handy for his business as it did for the world’s billionaires: a recent report by Wealth-X and UBS Global Billionaire Census 2013 showed that their combined fortune has more than doubled, to $6.5 trillion, from $3.1 trillion in 2009, indicating that the global financial crisis was good for those who own 10-plus-digit fortunes.

That said, it’s curious that some Brazilians reacted so ferociously to Almeida’s behavior at a time when a Brazilian is making global headlines for being in the center of one of the biggest financial collapses in history due to his huge appetite for credit.

Eike Batista, the former billionaire whose fortune has dropped from $30 billion just 18 months ago to less than $500 million, was also never shy to publicly state how rich he is. He loved to show visitors his Mercedes-Benz McLaren kept parked right in the living room of his mansion in Rio de Janeiro. In spite of being in the midst a financial crisis that has resulted in the dismantling of his once high-flying commodities empire, Batista was named in August one of the most admired leaders by young Brazilians, along with Barack Obama and Pope Francis.

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Some corrections. The definition of the great Brazilian middle class, those who earn between R$ 291 and R$ 1019 per capita a month (US$ 1499 and US$ 5248 annual), average family income between R$ 1030 and R$ 2813 (US$ 5305 and US$ 14488), less than the poverty line in the USA. Regarding the luxury market, taking Mercedes-Benz, as an example, sold 971 automobiles in Brazil in August 2013, compared to 142944 worldwide and 27474 in the USA. That said, tripling sales means as much as less than 1% worldwide or 7% only in the USA. Bear in mind the very same car costs about three times as much in Brazil due to taxes.

Anderson, I live in Brazil and I haven’t met a single person with any respect for this joker. You write about wealth and I expect you have met some wealthy people – me too. I’ve met several billionaires and what has usually struck me about people who genuinely have enormous wealth is that they don’t behave like this – they are typically quite modest about their wealth. The guys on the way up and seeking publicity behave like this – the genuinely wealthy will drive a VW, not a Ferrari.

Yes, most billionaires I’ve met are discrete when it comes to buying things and showing their wealth. But still they have yachts, private planes, mansions all over the world… And they are certainly not modest people. But Almeida and his showing off style are merely a detail in my post, which is basically about a possible credit crunch in Brazil. He’s just a glimpse of what might be coming and how people possibly are behaving in Brazil, proportionally to their wealth, of course.

Anderson, it’s hard to say that Brazil is in the so called bubble. At least not comparing to USA as the way it happened. Most of finance made here are guaranteed by government banks administered. Also i dont agree when you say “He’s just a glimpse of what might be coming and how people possibly are behaving in Brazil”, of course i dont like his attitude either. But we can’t just assume that is some exclusive brazilian acting, or say that people in Brazil do this way. Since we had have seen so many jerks like the one you used as example around the world behaving like this, just cause they have some money too.

This is very funny. Because it was later revealed that the Alexander de Alameida article was a huge joke played by an engineering student with no money. He went to all his friends and found people to lend him things like clothes (and a Ferrari) so he could interview for this magazine as a prank. He even duped FORBES! The truth is there are a few playboys in Brazil just like every country, but this is not reality.

Very wealthy people in Brazil drive Volkswagens, so they dont get shot by the very poor people that need $5 to survive until tomorrow.

On the other hand, there is a major credit crunch here that has been inadvertantly created by the populist government. In the past interest rates were so high almost nobody used credit. It was a very healthy consumer economy (despite low income and wages). With free flowing credit as what usually happens people are in above their heads. And with still low income and wages, unlikely to recover. There is definately a bubble looming!